Reassessment always hurts a little.

[sofiaviolet]

I periodically poke at Auriel, looking for things that need to be reworked. And while this usually winds up being a good thing - I always come out the other end with a more plausible and cohesive universe - it is always a massive pain in the ass while it’s going on.

And it’s never small changes. It’s always redrawing the map (at least I never got much of it done this time around), rearranging character relationships, etc. I move closer to and then further from our world in terms of technology and culture; this happens to be an away cycle, in the direction of clockwork infrastructure and art nouveau.

The things I drag in and take out have everything to do with what’s up in my life at the time. My impression of the sights and sounds changes - cambia, that’s Italian; I like it better. The taste of it, the sense of rolling over naturally, the way the seasons do (or should).

The constants (the subway, the river, the arrangement of the districts) might say something about me. But why things underground or public transit or urban planning matter so much… yeah, I don’t know either. We could ascribe the river to the Mississippi, if we must. (I’ve never named that river. If we break this project down and take it as far back as it goes, those are really the only constants: a city with a name, and a river without one.)

Originally published at Auriel. You can comment here or there.